The George W. Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attack on the World
Trade Center and Pentagon with an assault on U.S. civil liberty that Bush justified
in the name of the “war on terror.” The government assured us that
the draconian measures apply only to “terrorists.” The word terrorist,
however, was not defined. The government claimed the discretionary power to
decide who is a terrorist without having to present evidence or charges in a
court of law.

Frankly, the Bush administration’s policy evades any notion of procedural
due process of law. Administration assurances that harsh treatment is reserved
only for terrorists is meaningless when the threshold process for determining
who is and who is not a terrorist depends on executive discretion that is not
subject to review. Substantive rights are useless without the procedural rights
to enforce them.

Terrorist legislation and executive assertions created a basis upon which federal
authorities claimed they were free to suspend suspects’ civil liberties
in order to defend Americans from terrorism. Only after civil liberties groups
and federal courts challenged some of the unconstitutional laws and procedures
did realization spread that the Bush administration’s assault on the Bill
of Rights is a greater threat to Americans than are terrorists.

The alacrity with which Congress accepted the initial assault from the administration
is frightening. In 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act passed by a vote of 98 to 1 in
the… Continue reading →

For those who do not yet understand that Bush and Cheney have committed impeachable
offenses with regard to 9/11, I will provide information to back up the relevant
sections of Dennis Kucinich’s articles of impeachment against President Bush which deal with 9/11:

Article 2: Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent
Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as
a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression:

The results from this
search provide evidence for this article of impeachment.

Of course, Cheney is even more vulnerable to impeachment for 9/11 than Bush, as he was in charge of national defenses and war games on 9/11,
watched Flight 77 from many miles out as it approached the Pentagon and let it hit, and is otherwise implicated in the deaths which occurred on
that horrible day.

When Cynthia McKinney speaks the words of Martin Luther King Jr, they resound through the church with some of King’s cadence. “A time comes,” declares the former US congresswoman from Georgia, “when silence is betrayal.” The congregation answers with whoops and calls of “That’s right!” King was talking about America’s war in Vietnam. More than 40 years later, before the packed pews of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, McKinney is speaking of the American government’s war on its own people. The shock and awe phase of this conflict, we had been told earlier, began on September 11 2001, when the Bush administration launched attacks on New York and Washington, or at least waved them through.

According to a show of hands that February afternoon, several hundred people in the immaculate church believe this to be true. Some came in T-shirts bearing the words “9/11 was an inside job”. One wore a badge demanding that you “Examine your assumptions”. Quite a few bought the DVDs on sale in the foyer, most of which bore photographs of the Twin Towers spewing smoke. They had all come to hear the message of Architects, Engineers & Scientists for 9/11 Truth, one of the dozens of groups across the US which campaign to persuade us that everything we think we know about 9/11 is wrong.

Marion Cotillard, actress–“There was a tower in Spain which burnt for 24 hours. It never collapsed”

SPECIAL REPORT: SUING THE SAUDIS
Pinning the blame for 9/11 Special Report: A Phila. law firm wages an epic legal battle to win billions from Saudi Arabia.

By Chris Mondics, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

First of two parts.

Less than a mile from the mournful place in Lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center came crashing to the ground, in a hushed federal courthouse, a small band of Philadelphia lawyers is prying loose secrets of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

It is here that the Cozen O’Connor law firm has filed an 812-page lawsuit on behalf of U.S. and global insurance companies alleging that Saudi Arabia and Saudi-backed Islamist charities nurtured and financed al-Qaeda, the author of those deadly attacks.

Led by its flinty chairman and founder, Stephen Cozen, the firm has invested thousands of hours and millions of dollars to scour the world for witnesses, documents and other evidence in its attempt to hold the oil-rich desert kingdom liable for more than $5 billion in damages.

Among the companies represented in the lawsuit are Chubb, Ace, Allstate, One Beacon, and nearly three dozen other insurers.

“Our concern was whether there was a viable case to be made against the defendant,” Cozen said, “and whether the defendant could pay.”

Round 1 in this titanic legal battle went to the Saudis and their high-powered lawyers three years ago when a U.S. District Court judge removed the government and Saudi royals as defendants.

This story has now been updated with new information from Symposium organizers.

The New England 9/11 Symposium, held this past Saturday (5/17/08) in Keene, NH, was a tremendous success. We had a great turn out and received local and, of course, independent media coverage.

First, the morning began at 9:45 a.m. with Bob McIlvaine’s heartfelt speech, which is a reminder that, as Jon Gold put it, what we feel is nothing compared to what family members like McIlvaine feel. The part of his remarks that stuck out to me the most was when McIlvaine detailed his experiences researching 9/11 on his own and described his utter disgust with the 9/11 Commission. While speaking about the Commission he mentioned the day that Condoleeza Rice testified about the August 6th, 2001 PDB. To him it was obvious that Rice was spinning, lying, and not directly answering any questions posed to her by the Commissioners, who’s questions were light as it was. He talked of how outraged he was when, after Rice testified, family members were rushing to shake her hand. The deception was so blatant how could the others not see it? I, as well as many others, believe that Bob is very strong and very brave.

Next up was acclaimed Canadian media critic and author, Barrie Zwicker. Zwicker offered his excellent take on the media’s unwillingness to cover this issue. I had seen his presentation before in 2006 but it was watching Zwicker take the editor of The Keene Sentinel (a… Continue reading →

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Iceland is the world’s most peaceful nation while the United States is ranked among the bottom third, according to a study released on Tuesday.

The “Global Peace Index,” compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranked the United States 97th out of 140 countries according to how peaceful they were domestically and how they interacted with the outside world.

The United States slipped from 96th last year, but was still ahead of foe Iran which ranked 105th. It, however, lagged Belarus, Cuba, South Korea, Chile, Libya and others which were listed as more peaceful.

Iraq, which the United States invaded in 2003, leading to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, ranked lowest on the index. Afghanistan, another country invaded by the United States this decade, was also in the bottom five, along with Sudan, Somalia and Israel.

Commenting on the U.S. ranking, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said to realize a more peaceful and prosperous world, “Often times, you have to do difficult things and a lot of times, people don’t agree with them. They don’t like them.”

“A lot of times you fall down in these lists but at the end of the day it is in defense of democracy and the way of life we have enjoyed over the past several decades,” he added.

The United States has come under strong international criticism for the invasion of Iraq and… Continue reading →

While the US media obsesses on delegates, superdelegates and whether or not Hillary Clinton is using math formulae hallowed by MSNBC, we learn that US interrogators used snakes to torture prisoners (that’s right, PentaPost –torture, not ‘interrogate’ and prisoners, not ‘detainees’) at Guantánamo Bay – while the FBI watched.

By Lori Price
www.legitgov.org

http://www.legitgov.org/essay_price_snakes_superdelegates_210508.html

21 May 2008

Today, we learned form NEWS.com.au, an Australian news and information site, that US interrogators – at least on one occasion – used a snake (in addition to military dogs and pornography) on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. We also discovered that “[Australian detainee Mamdouh] Habib alleged that ‘Mike’ a private-contract interrogator with Lockheed Martin, had hit him during an interrogation.” Further, we discovered that, ”of the more than 450 FBI agents who served at Guantánamo… almost half ‘observed or heard about various rough or aggressive treatment of detainees, primarily by military interrogators’.”

Snakes used in interrogation sessions?! This is Nazi tactics territory, folks – using our dollars and under our name! I don’t care about Democratic superdelegate totals or nomination math formulae. The US media is using the election itself as a distraction for war crimes that are being carried out in our name, every day!

Lest we forget: U.S. Has Detained 2,500 Juveniles as Enemy Combatants 16 May 2008 The United States has imprisoned approximately 2,500 people younger than 18 as illegal enemy combatants in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay since 2002, according to a report filed by the Bush regime with the… Continue reading →

Hundreds of victim family members have been demanding answers to questions about the deaths of loved ones ever since the horrific events of September 11, 2001 – to no avail. Dozens of witnesses who offered to testify to the 9/11 Commission were ignored; many others found their testimony omitted. According to a group of Keene State College students, without a clear accounting of the facts, no reform can be effective in protecting national security. The students have organized a one-day symposium, on Saturday, May 17 — “This symposium has been put together by undergraduate student scholars — a group of young people committed to the pursuit of truth in a country that so often substitutes the comfortable life and easy paths over the rocky roads of ethical personhood,” states Donna Marsh O’Connor, mother of Vanessa Lang Langer, who died escaping the South Tower.

Keene, NH May 12, 2008 — New Hampshire College students and local activists have organized a one-day symposium, entitled, “Family Members, Researchers and Whistleblowers Speak Out”, to be held at Keene High School on Saturday, May 17 from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. “This symposium has been put together by undergraduate student scholars — a group of young people committed to the pursuit of truth in a country that so often substitutes the comfortable life and easy paths over the rocky roads of ethical personhood,” says O’Connor, who along with Bob McIlvaine, who lost his son Bobby, and Michele Little, who lost her firefighter brother David, will be making presentations at the symposium.…

Hundreds of credible, credentialed scientists, architects, engineers, scholars, and former military and government officials are now on record criticizing the official 9/11 report, asking for answers to many troubling questions, and urging a new, independent investigation. (See PatriotsQuestion911.org). The mainstream media have consistently ignored this criticism, even though recent Zogby International polls have shown that a majority of the public is not satisfied with the 9/11 Commission’s report.

Even the Chair and Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, in a… Continue reading →

More material has been added covering the NSA’s surveillance of Ahmed al-Hada, father-in-law of alleged Pentagon hijacker Khalid Almihdhar. Both President Bush and Vice President Cheney used the non-exploitation of calls between his phone in Yemen and the hijackers in the US to justify the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program in January 2006. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell attributed the failure to trace the calls to a 1981 executive order earlier this year, and Mukasey bizarrely then claimed that one of the calls was between the US and Afghanistan, rather than Yemen. This confused the media somewhat, and a group of congressmen asked Mukasey for an explanation.

The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv on Wednesday reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel.

“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” Ma’ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events “swung American public opinion in our favor.”

Netanyahu reportedly made the comments during a conference at Bar-Ilan University on the division of Jerusalem as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cast doubt over the veracity of the September 11 attacks Thursday, calling it a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Four or five years ago, a suspicious event occurred in New York. A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed but never published their names,” Ahmadinejad told Iranians in the holy city of Qom.

“Under this pretext, they [the U.S.] attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then, a million people have been killed only in Iraq.”

Speaking Wednesday at a news conference on the Iran threat, Netanyahu compared Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler and likened Tehran’s nuclear program to the threat the Nazis posed to Europe in the late 1930s.

Netanyahu said Iran differed from the Nazis in one vital respect, explaining that “where that [Nazi] regime embarked on a global conflict before it developed nuclear weapons,” he said.…

WASHINGTON — A new U.N. Human Rights Council official assigned to monitor
Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives
may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

On March 26, Richard Falk, Milbank professor of international law emeritus
at Princeton University, was named by unanimous vote to a newly created position
to report on human rights in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian
Arabs. While Mr. Falk’s specialty is human rights and international law, since
the attacks in 2001, he has devoted some of his time to challenging what he
calls the "9-11 official version."

On March 24 in an interview with a radio host and former University of Wisconsin
instructor, Kevin Barrett, Mr. Falk said, "It is possibly true that especially
the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the
world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether
they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen
or not, I don’t think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say
is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation
of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do
these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of
the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently
possess."

There is an increasing number of Americans who believe that George Bush, Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and several of their toadies should be in prison, this
writer included. But to suggest that the Bush administration is somehow involved
in the 9/11 attacks seems to be a jaw-dropping and frightening stretch, but
not to the scores of interested folks who turned out to hear David Ray Griffin’s
talk March 28 at the Poinsettia Pavilion in Ventura. For those who get their
information from Fox News, such a charge is blasphemy, treason and worthy of
a perpetual Blackwater firing squad on YouTube. Griffin settled for frequents
bursts of applause.

The 9/11 tragedy is certainly not the first event in American history surrounded
by controversy and conspiracy theories, just merely the latest.

But as the pages blow off the calendar, witnesses die off, the trail grows
cold and interest wanes, assisted by the fact the American people have the attention
span of a butterfly sneeze.

But 9/11 is still fresh in everyone’s memory, partly because Bush can’t go
three minutes without playing the fear card and invoking the images of airplanes
flying into tall buildings. That memorable Tuesday morning happened less than
seven years ago and not only is it an annual school assignment, but many of
the participants and survivors are still alive with plenty of contradictory
stories to tell.

A letter has been sent by leaders of the House Judiciary Committee to Attorney
General Michael Mukasey, demanding that he explain a recent public statement
that federal authorities failed to intercept a call from suspected terrorists
in Afghanistan prior to the 9/11 attacks, when doing so could have prevented
the attacks from taking place.

Mukasey blamed that failure on a lack of the sort of warrantless wiretapping
authority that the administration has now called on Congress to provide. However,
there has never been any previous mention of such a call, and the Judiciary
Committee letter — signed by Chairman John Conyers and two subcommittee chairs
— points out that the law that existed at the time would have allowed the call
to be intercepted immediately, with permission granted retroactively by the
FISA court.

That letter has been noted by blogs, such as Talking Points Memo, but does
not appear to have gained any attention from the mainstream media.

Blogger Glenn Greenwald, who has covered the Mukasey incident extensively,originally believed that “he just made this up out of whole cloth in order
to mislead Americans into supporting the administration’s efforts to eliminate
spying safeguards and basic constitutional liberties and to stifle the pending
surveillance lawsuits against telecoms.”

However, Greenwald has now received an email from the Department of Justice’s
Principal Deputy Director of Public Affairs, citing both a reference by a 2002
Congressional Joint Inquiry to an untraced call between one of the 9/11 hijackers… Continue reading →

For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration
argued that the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches and
seizures on U.S. soil did not apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.

That view was expressed in a secret Justice Department legal memo dated Oct.
23, 2001. The administration stressed yesterday that it now disavows that view.

The October 2001 memo was written at the White House’s request by John Yoo,
then the deputy assistant attorney general, and addressed to Alberto R. Gonzales,
then the White House counsel. The37-page memo has not been released.

Its existence was disclosed Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret Justice
Department memo, dated March 14, 2003, that discussed the legality of various
interrogation techniques. It was released by the Pentagon in response to an
ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

“Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application
to domestic military operations,” the footnote in that memo states, referring
to a document titled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist
Activities Within the United States.”

Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo is unclear.

We brought you Attorney General, Michael Mukasey’s tearful remarks about 9/11 and the ongoing FISA battle in Congress last week and on Tuesday’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow dig deeper into what was either a series of lies from the AG or an admission of gross negligence on the part of the Bush Administration leading up to that tragic day.

Mukasey claimed that the U.S. received a phone call from a terrorist safe house in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, but couldn’t trace the call because the FISA laws were too restrictive — which is, of course, a lie. Mukasey was a Federal Judge, he knows that. Olbermann says that someone in the House or Senate needs to haul the Attorney General in and question him and find out whether he was lying to make a political point, or if the Bush administration really did receive such a call and chose not to act on it, leaving the country vulnerable to attack.

Maddow: “…Oh please, just let him have just been lying, because if he was telling the truth here, if there really was a call from a known al Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan to the United States before 9/11 which the Bush Administration did not tap and trace? That is huge news and we ought to get some answers about why we were left so unprotected and surprised on 9/11. Let’s hope that he was… Continue reading →

David Ray Griffin on the 9/11 Truth Movement and Bush-Cheney’s “stupid” imperialism

By Matthew Singer03/27/2008

When David Ray Griffin conceived his first book regarding the events of Sept. 11, 2001, his interpretation of what transpired that day revolved around the concept of blowback, that the attacks were a byproduct of America’s decades of aggressive foreign policy toward the Middle East. In short, at the time, he bought the official story of 9/11. He wasn’t letting the United States government off the hook for their role in the attacks, but he wasn’t placing culpability where he would eventually place it: squarely on the shoulders of the Bush administration.

While researching for that first book, Griffin came across a growing community — concentrated mostly online — of people questioning the circumstances of Sept. 11 as reported by the mainstream media. Now, the retired professor, theologian and longtime Santa Barbara resident is one the leading voices of the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement, citizens who believe the horror of that day was not caused by radical Islamic terrorists but was orchestrated within the walls of the White House. Derided in the press as loony conspiracy theorists (if given any attention at all), the group, Griffin says, now includes intellectuals such as himself, as well as architects, engineers, pilots, former military officers and even ex-CIA operatives.

“The change in the movement has been rather drastic, because a few years back, people would dismiss us as a bunch of crazies on the Internet. And then… Continue reading →